The subject is about two entries really but I’m going to combine them into one blog post even though they’re not related apart from they were both thoughts/observations from the week.

I’ll start with Cyclists…

I think it’s simply too dangerous to cycle in many parts of London, and being a Car driver I am largely going to have a streak against cyclists (apparently they are never wrong if you are in an accident with one). Having said that, I really think that they do bring some of it on themselves and shouldn’t carry the holier than thou attitude that many seem to.

I will never forget the morning where I was millimetres (it felt like that at the time and was probably a few metres) away from hitting a cyclist who jumped a red light. They were very fortunate that I was alert, that my brakes were in good working order and was therefore able to stop in time bearing in mind i was travelling at 25-30mph as I went through my green light. I will never forget the look on her face – there was no regret, apology or thank you. I was in complete shock. it was lucky I was only 10 minutes away from my workplace (though I was running late as usual) otherwise I would’ve had to stop in order to get my head straight.

Cyclists, along with Pedestrians, Motorists and Motorcyclists are subject in the UK to The Highway Code.

While Cyclists cannot be punished as easily as motorists can, dangerous or careless cycling is an offence that carries a fine of up to £2500. Note that cycling on the pavement is illegal and could be subject to a £500 fine. I have never heard of either of these being enforced.

I believe that cyclists jumping a red light should be fined and this should be enforced. It isn’t because police officers are usually based in cars or on the street and unable to catch them since they are more agile. Bikes don’t have number plates and there is no way to catch up with them once they’re out of site. So, how do you enforce this? Light-heartedly, I suggested that police officers should be sent out with lasso ropes to hook cyclists in from the street but this is clearly not practical. With a bit more thought, I came up with the idea that enforcing the highway code for cyclists could be handed over to traffic wardens on a commission basis.

Traffic wardens in the UK have become notorious for finding means of extracting more cash than ever from motorists in parking fines especially when they clamp them or tow them away. There are many private companies that are employed by UK councils to maximise the income often featuring a payment on commission system. Traffic wardens are generally hated by everyone in the country apart from their boss which would make them perfect for enforcing the law. So much so that some wardens in Scotland are equipped with spit testing kits so they can hunt down those that spit on them. If anyone can make cyclists think twice about jumping a red light, traffic wardens are the ones for the job. They are inventive and are used to having abuse thrown at them. They use bikes, mopeds, buses and cars to patrol their areas, and like nothing more than extracting money out of the public. They will spot whether you have parked 2mm into a no parking area or whether you’re 20 seconds late returning to your parking meter.

Rant over, I know there are plenty of perfectly safe cyclists out there, but the number you see who don’t wear helmets or have no lights at night – I always say to them under my breath that you’re not going to live long if you continue like that. For sure we don’t want to discourage cyclists, but if you are going to cycle on the road you need to obey the laws of the road. Otherwise you deserve everything you get if you get hit by a car.

Next, OS X…
I was doing a bit of a cleanup at the weekend when I noticed one of the partitions on one of my drives was nearly full
So I fired up one of my fave apps WhatSize 10 to find out what was taking up the most space these days and I was slightly alarmed about how much junk was in my startup volume:
• 787mb of Printer Drivers (most of which I don’t have)
• 385mb of saved install packages
• A 173mb Console Log
• 1.56Gb of iPod Photo Cache – bear in mind that the actual photos only take up 379mb – what’s going on here!

What on earth is going on? I’ve spent two weekends cleaning stuff up in various folders because I need the space for my iTunes library. Have managed to get my main drive up to 16Gb available now after finding two tv series’ in my movies folder and a site rip of some site which came to 3.4Gb. I’ve backed all this up to DVD. Still have the mammoth task of sorting my “to sort” folder and not sure what to do with the iPod Photo Cache, but it’s looking better!